Chapter 17: You Seem Particularly Afraid I Might Run Away
Jiang Xiaoyuan paused, then said, “Why do I feel like… you seem particularly afraid that I might run away?”
Qi Lian admitted frankly: “You could say that.”
From the front, he looked gentle and refined, but from the side, he was a different person. His nose, with his glasses, was sharp and arrogant, his chin clean-shaven, his lips bloodless with a slight, mocking upturn, as if deriding the world.
Jiang Xiaoyuan laughed at herself: “I’m as poor as a dog now, where could I even run to?”
Qi Lian walked around to the other side and opened the car door for her. “Is Jiang Xiaoyuan your real name?”
Jiang Xiaoyuan silently sat in the passenger seat. Suddenly, her attention was caught by a photo clipped to the rearview mirror. The photo was old and yellowing, showing a pale young boy she recognized as the true face behind the mechanical visage of the lighthouse assistant.
“Xu Jingyang, do you know him?” Qi Lian handed her the photo.
Jiang Xiaoyuan nodded instinctively.
The lighthouse assistant was tricked by Ming Guang just like her, and struggled for several months as a disabled person in a parallel space. Could it be this timeline?
Jiang Xiaoyuan: “His legs…”
“Amputated,” Qi Lian confirmed, then asked, “What was your original identity, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Jiang Xiaoyuan was momentarily stunned—she realized she couldn’t immediately answer.
Since she had been absent from work for longer than she had been on the job, Jiang Xiaoyuan couldn’t even tell her the full name of her workplace and her position accurately, and she had no accomplishments that she can talk about in her life. How could she introduce herself? “I’m so-and-so’s daughter,” or “I am the famous prodigal daughter of so-and-so”?
For the first time, Jiang Xiaoyuan realized that she was so helpless. She squeaked until the tips of her ears turned red, and then she said vaguely: “…he is a white-collar worker.”
Qi Lian: “Your family background is quite good, right? I can tell.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan felt even more awkward: “Uh… it’s alright.”
Qi Lian’s fingers tapped the steering wheel intermittently, sensing Jiang Xiaoyuan was holding back. Her background was likely more than “alright.” As soon as he looked at Jiang Xiaoyuan, he knew that she was a spoiled young lady, and the disappointment in his heart could not be greater. Initially, he didn’t want to bother with her, having failed so many times over the years that he had grown used to it. If this one failed, another would come along.
But recently, his contact with Xu Jingyang, now the lighthouse assistant, had abruptly ended, forcing him to reconnect with Jiang Xiaoyuan.
Jiang Xiaoyuan asked: “What’s going on? Do you know the lighthouse assistant, Xu Jingyang? Are you…”
“No, I’m different from you. I’m a native,” Qi Lian responded dismissively, “He’s a friend.”
He took out a cigarette box, fiddled with it for a moment, glanced at Jiang Xiaoyuan, then stuffed it back into his pocket.
“After Xu Jingyang disappeared, I looked for him for a long time until I met someone just like him.” Qi Lian said.
Jiang Xiaoyuan held her breath: “Someone else like me?”
“Well, there is a man in his sixties.” Qi Lian explained, “He was a community garbage collector, often making mistakes at work. Once, he almost set his rented house on fire because he forgot to turn off the stove. His family took him to the hospital, and he was diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer’s.”
hese words struck a chord with Jiang Xiaoyuan, and her rusted mind was forced to creak back into motion. She asked sharply, “Why would you care about an elderly man with dementia?”
Qi Lian took out an old mobile phone, its corners battered and bruised. On closer inspection, there were even scratches from sharp objects, making it look like a weathered old veteran. It was even more battered than Jiang Xiaoyuan’s ‘remote control’, but thankfully it still worked.
From the ancient inbox, Qi Lian retrieved a message with basic details: a name, gender, age, and workplace. The sender’s number was blank—messages from the “Lighthouse” always were.
Jiang Xiaoyuan asked, “Then what?”
Qi Lian continued, “I went to see him. One day, he was sitting on a community bench. I pretended to ask for directions and found him shakily solving a partial differential equation on a napkin with a broken pen.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan questioned, “Solving a what?”
“…” Qi Lian choked, “You get the general idea.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan: “I… I, well, I’m an art student – you mean he’s actually been replaced, he’s not the garbage collector he used to be, and he’s not demented at all, right?”
Qi Lian: “No.”
“So how…” Jiang Xiaoyuan had a terrifying realization, “No, you mean he was originally a highly educated person, replaced in this timeline, becoming a garbage collector, and turning into…”
“An elderly man with dementia,” Qi Lian finished.
The lighthouse stole an athlete’s legs, a scientist’s intellect.
Jiang Xiaoyuan drew a sharp breath.
Qi Lian looked at her with a hint of pity: “This is what your so-called ‘lighthouse’ is like, it only shines forward, and there is only shadow behind.”
The horror rising in Jiang Xiaoyuan’s chest subsided, replaced by a peculiar sense of relief—luckily, she had no such intellect, and her legs made little difference.
Jiang Xiaoyuan: “What happened to the old man later?”
“He disappeared,” Qi Lian said, “Like Xu Jingyang, he vanished one day.”
Silence filled the cramped car space. After a long while, Jiang Xiaoyuan asked softly, “What happened next?”
Qi Lian handed her the old phone. It looked like it hadn’t been used in a long time. There were not many things in the mailbox. Several consecutive messages were the basic information of one person, like cold files, only the person involved could see the lives that were leaving in pain and despair.
Jiang Xiaoyuan looked up, “Did they all ‘disappear’?”
“No,” Qi Lian replied calmly, “Those who didn’t believe me disappeared. Others who did believe… died.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan cried out: “Died?”
Qi Lian said, “Suicide—the virus in the lighthouse is constantly looking for scapegoats. Some couldn’t accept their stolen identities and killed themselves here. You understand your situation, right? You don’t think the virus sent you here out of kindness, do you?”
Jiang Xiaoyuan’s mind was a chaotic mess. Her lips trembled, and she nodded with an ugly expression.
Qi Lian gave her a discerning look, maintaining his outward patience while thinking to himself, “She doesn’t seem too bright, but she’s not completely stupid either.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan: “The Lighthouse… I mean Xu Jingyang, since he clearly knew that Ming Guang was trying to set him up and could predict his own fate, why did he still decisively abandon his identity here after arranging everything and go back to his death?”
Qi Lian hesitated. He always felt that such a young lady who was born with insufficient IQ and acquired emotional disability would not understand, so he just said perfunctorily: “He couldn’t live without his legs. It’s impossible to survive. Rather than a miserable existence, he chose to seek revenge—you can think of it that way.”
A butterfly can’t live with just one wing. Some people would rather die as martyrs than to live at the mercy of others.
Qi Lian didn’t bother to say more, but Jiang Xiaoyuan’s heart wasn’t as clueless as he thought. After all, the lighthouse assistant had given her his entire life, a testament to his extraordinary generosity and selflessness.
Jiang Xiaoyuan asked, “How did he know he could inhabit a robot’s body?”
Qi Lian was taken aback, “Wait, Xu Jingyang told you all that?”
Jiang Xiaoyuan lowered her head, holding back tears, and briefly recounted her two entries into the lighthouse. Qi Lian’s expression changed.
He silently got out of the car, stood on the street, and lit a cigarette.
Qi Lian stood with his back to Jiang Xiaoyuan, broad shoulders thin, one hand in his pocket, silently exhaling weak smoke rings into the darkening street. Cold wind blew into the car through the open door, and Jiang Xiaoyuan, curled up on the seat, watched as night fell.
When her hands and feet were shivering from the cold, , Qi Lian seemed to calm down and returned to the car. The previous gentleness on his face disappeared, his lips tightened into a line.
“He didn’t know he could become a robot, nor did he expect such luck,” Qi Lian said abruptly. “He pinned his hopes on me, hoping I could help him hold on to people like you. Man, it was really lucky that we were get in touch again. We found out that if someone like you dies in this world, the virus quickly sends a new victim. But there’s a rule: only one outsider like you can exist at the same time, and the virus seems to only transport people to this timeline.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan blinked.
“He told you, right? if the virus doesn’t have time to find its next identity and stays too long, it will be destroyed by the law. But we don’t know how long that takes,” Qi Lian stared into her eyes, “In other words, you must establish yourself in this world, live as long as possible, and not give it another chance.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan felt something blocking her chest, making it hard to breathe.
Qi Lian added softly: “Otherwise, his gamble will have failed.”
This sentence hit Jiang Xiaoyuan like a heavy blow, and for a moment, she felt the weight of countless lives pressing down on her shoulders. She felt like a piece of stubborn iron, forged by chance into a crucial but fragile blade, indispensable yet delicate, caught in a dilemma, unable to bear the heavy responsibility..
Jiang Xiaoyuan asked, “Why me?”
“I don’t know,” Qi Lian said, “Maybe because you have the least to lose?”
Jiang Xiaoyuan couldn’t tell if it was her imagination, but she felt a subtle hint of irony in Qi Lian’s tone. After all, as a spoiled rich girl, she had nothing to her name. She was a materialistic rich girl, spiritually impoverished, with nothing to lose except her dirty money.
Perhaps this was why the lighthouse assistant Xu Jingyang chose her—after all, don’t they say that problems that can be solved with money are not problems?
Qi Lian exerted a lot of pressure on Jiang Xiaoyuan, both overtly and covertly, but he didn’t dare harbor any unrealistic hopes for her.
He started the car slowly, thinking: “If worse comes to worst, I’ll just take care of her myself.”
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